Ask YC: How do you organize and manage your daily contents?

Re:Ask YC: How do you organize and manage your daily contents? by spydez on Friday May 30, 2008 @10:47AM (#204394)

I subscribe to the one text file way of thinking. Well, mostly one text file. Some giant parts (phone/address book, usernames/password hints) got sharded off into their own text file.

Reasons for a simple text file: Text works well with unix CLI tools (grep, etc). Text can be read and editted on every computer out there. I own my data - ain't stuck in someone else's server or hidden in a big binary blob. The format is flexible, so it works with everything I throw at it.

Everything else is in the one text file. Ideas, books I wanna read, reminders, todo lists... everything.

It's sort of a mess, but I can usually search straight to what I need. If I can't find it straight away, I sprinkle in keywords when I get there...

Before I was doing things this way, I using emails and IMs and post it notes and a notebook and... I could never find anything.

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Re:Ask YC: How do you organize and manage your daily contents? by bprater on Friday May 30, 2008 @03:42PM (#204788)

I do similar. To search for things, I tag all my entries, so it looks like like this:

@todo @linux @work

- Don't forget to process the client's log files today!

The file has grown huge, but I can still find what I need quickly.

BONUS: You can use quicksilver to add text to files, so from idea to entry, it only takes a second or two. No app booting, web page surfing, etc.

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